The opening season of the Off-West End venue, Westminster Theatre will feature a production that may include the Royal Shakespeare Company and will feature direction by Steven Berkoff a patron of the London Aloft team.
The Shakespeare Company may use the Westminster Theatre as its home for testing new material if negotiations proceed as planned with London Aloft who owns the rights to the site.
Although the Westminster Theatre has two performance spaces that can host 260 standing in one and 350 seated in the other, plans are to open the location to a variety of uses including a restaurant, jazz music, and cabaret.
Chief Executive of London Aloft commented that this is not a crazy idea, as the hope is the restaurant will provide enough income to sustain the artistic aims of the group for the new Theatre. He went on to say that with no arts council funding, the building needs to be commercialized in order to complete its original purposes.
Theatre productions and programming will be overseen by Greg Thompson who formerly worked with both the Glasgow Tron and the RSC. Thompson stated expectations are high for the restaurant as the programming will be aimed at the fringe of London, therefore the more capital that the restaurant earns the more risqué productions can be.
Michelson mentioned that London Aloft would love to perform a show that contains the Spymonkey theatre troupe if proper negotiations work out. Additionally, they would like to bring smaller theatre groups from London’s edges up to the London environment to expose citizens to new talent.
Found near the Victoria Palace Theatre, the restaurant is planned to serve breakfast and lunch to patrons without reservations throughout the day and offer meal deal enhanced tickets to theatre goers in the evening to further encourage show attendance.
